Where to Start With Arthur Conan Doyle: Best Books in Order

For Conan Doyle, the path is really the Holmes question, and the answer is: A Study in Scarlet first — it's where Watson meets Holmes, and the meeting matters — then The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the story collection where the legend actually lives, then The Hound of the Baskervilles, the best of the novels. The whole canon (four novels, fifty-six stories) is now public domain, so the complete Holmes is free. Around it stands the non-Holmes shelf Doyle himself preferred — dinosaurs, medieval knights, and history he considered his real work.

The Holmes order, what to skip on a first pass, and the rest of Doyle.

First: A Study in Scarlet — the meeting

The 1887 debut gives you the handshake ("You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive"), the Baker Street arrangement, and the method demonstrated on a first murder. One honest warning: the novel's long middle section decamps to Utah for the killer's backstory — a Victorian structure that surprises modern readers; ride it out or skim it lightly, because the frame around it is essential and everything after is downhill skiing. Two hours total.

Second: The Adventures — where the legend lives

The twelve stories of 1891–92 — "A Scandal in Bohemia" (Irene Adler, the one exception), "The Red-Headed League," "The Speckled Band" (Doyle's own favorite) — are the Holmes that conquered the world. The short form is the character's native habitat: one client, one puzzle, one hour. Read these and you've had the essential experience; everything else is more of the best thing. Continue with The Memoirs (ending at Reichenbach Falls — the death that forced a resurrection by public demand) and The Return.

Third: The Hound of the Baskervilles — the novel done right

The 1902 masterpiece solves the Holmes-novel problem (novels need sustained menace; Holmes solves things too fast) by removing Holmes for the middle third — Watson alone on Dartmoor with the legend, the moor, and the hound. It's the consensus best long Holmes, genuinely atmospheric, and works even as a first Doyle if you'd rather begin with a novel. The remaining novel, The Valley of Fear, is underrated; The Sign of Four gives Watson his wife.

The non-Holmes shelf Doyle preferred

Doyle resented Holmes's shadow ("he takes my mind from better things") and his better things hold up: The Lost World (1912) — Professor Challenger's dinosaur plateau — founded the lost-world genre and is pure adventure pleasure; the Brigadier Gerard stories are Napoleonic comedy gems narrated by a magnificently vain hussar; The White Company was his own pick for his best book. None requires apology as a detour. But the honest map says what the world decided: the doctor from Edinburgh built the most beloved friendship in fiction, and Poe's Dupin may have supplied the blueprint, but Baker Street is where readers moved in. All of it free, all of it in print for a reason.

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